David Hodgson to come out of retirement

David Hodgson has confirmed he will pull on the boots once again and come out of retirement to play for Hull KR for the 2017 season.

Hodgson, 35, retired at the end of 2014 season after 366 Super League appearances, will once again pull on a Hull KR jersey on to help the injury depleted club.

Hodgson is currently an assistance coach at Hull KR and confirmed this week that the club has registered him as a player for the 2017 season.

Injuries to Matty Marsh and Joe Wardill who are both expected to miss the first half of the season and with Ben Cockayne and Jake Butler-Fleming struggling to be right for round 1, Hodgson will make a Jamie Peacock-like return to the game.

With the Rovers Regulation after the devastating defeat in the Million Pound game against Salford Red Devils, Hodgson has been seen training with Rovers’ first-team throughout pre-season under new head coach Tim Sheens.

“It’s been two years since I last played which has given me plenty of time to recover,” Hodgson said.

“I feel fresh so I’m looking forward to getting back into it.

“I’ve always filled in at training since I became a coach but I’ve stepped that up throughout pre-season and I’ve done a lot of hard sessions with the team.

“I said to Tim that I would train up until Christmas and see how I went but the body feels good. “Hopefully I can add something to the mix with my experience and I’ll be available if Tim needs to call on me.

“The younger kids coming through in the backs are quality players but it always helps having somebody alongside you who’s played for a long time.

“I’ll be facing Hull FC this weekend and it will be a tough test for us, especially for some of the younger lads.

“Can you really call it a friendly when it’s a derby?

There’ll be Super League intensity to it and hopefully we’ll be there at the end of the year playing against more Super League teams so it will be good preparation for that.”

Coach Tim Sheens comments at training this week: “With the injuries to our backs at the moment, we’re a little under done in that area for the early part of the season.

“Dave has been covering at training and has been going well, but we certainly don’t expect him to play every game for us.

“Until we finalise our recruitment and get everybody fit and available, Dave has agreed to fill in and we officially registered him today.

“He’ll do a good job for us and his experience will be useful with our young centres.

“He’s still got the ability as a player but we’re keen to keep him on the coaching staff as well so we’ll see how he goes.”

Hodgson, scored 184 tries in 366 appearances for Halifax, Wigan, Salford, Huddersfield and Hull KR and will look to add to that tally in 2017.